Results revealed that reports of infants born to drug abusing mothers increased from 6.7 per 1,000 live births in 1981 to 20.3 per 1,000 live births in 1987; abuse of cocaine accounted for most of the increase. When standardized for race and ethnicity, the mortality rate for drug-exposed infants born from 1978 through 1986 was 35.9, or 2.4 times that for infants in New York City in general. Drug-exposed infants were more than three times as likely as infants in the general population to be of low birthweight. The association of both opiates and cocaine with increased mortality and low birthweight was similar. Death rates from sudden infant death syndrome and AIDS were especially higher for drug-exposed infants than for those in the general population and were similar for opiate-exposed and cocaine- exposed infants. Figure, tables, and 11 references